SCAP v2 XCCDF and Content Authoring Working Group Charter and Telecon Agenda

[Joe Sain - MITRE]

Greetings -

Please find attached and below the charter for the XCCDF and content authoring working group and the agenda for the working group telecon, which will be held Thursday, July 18, at 10:00 AM EDT. The charter is intended to encapsulate initial thoughts regarding the direction of the working group's efforts. These topics may be discussed in more detail at the Thursday telecon.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Regards,

Joe Sain

MITRE SCAP v2 Team

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Scoping and Work Goals for SCAP v2 XCCDF and Content Authoring Working Group

The SCAP v2 Community has created several targeted working groups to approach different sections of the SCAP v2 effort.

This working group, titled the XCCDF and Content Authoring Working Group, is focusing on a few core topics:

• ·         Development of strategies, including changes to the languages themselves, to simplify authoring of SCAP content. This includes improving the readability of the content itself.
• ·         Development of strategies to make SCAP results easier to trace. This includes better clarity around why a particular check passed or failed and better clarity around how tailoring of checks impacted the assessment.
• ·         Develop strategies so that SCAP content can quickly be applied to new devices and contexts quickly. This includes making it easier to add content to address new software or device types.

The nominal scope of the work of this group is quite broad, encompassing multiple standards (XCCDF, OCIL, and others) and with the general objectives of making the languages easier to use and apply. As such, the initial work of the workgroup will need to be identification of specific objectives of greatest import. This can then help identify which standards are of interest and how they may need to evolve.

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Agenda - XCCDF and Content Authoring Telecon, July 18, 2019

1.            Discuss Scope and Work Goals

                a.            Any disagreement or additions?

                b.            Is there a prioritization of the identified topics (either due to criticality of need or group interest)?

                c.             Will revision of XCCDF be the focus of the group's effort, or are different/new standards more useful?

 

2.            Work shaping

                a.            What would an initial product look like? (Ideally, one that we could have a draft of by September 16 and the next SCAP workshop.)

                b.            What do early milestones look like?

                c.             Who can help contribute to those milestones?

 

3.            Resource identification

                a.            Do we need a GitHub or similar service?

                b.            Do we need to hold additional teleconferences?